AKMA’s Random Thoughts

More Delighted Than Amused

Dorothea’s in danger of landing a gig that entails entering some polytonic Greek (Modern Greek does fine with a greatly-simplifed system of accents compared to classical-Hellenistic Greek; “polytonic” refers to the fully-accented text that classical texts rely on). Of course, I’m pleased — the more polytonic Greek in the world, the happier I am — and especially pleased that it may draw Dorothea further into the world of Unicode Greek. But don’t keep a secret, Dorothea; what’s the new-and-improved method?

You Know Me

For those who find my persona wearisomely, hyperbolically solemn — and justly so; I take everything too seriously — I offer the following morning scene.

Picture a tall but, ahem, padded middle-aged guy down in the basement pedalling furiously on his stationary bike, perspiring copiously, reading a monograph about the “Gospel of Peter,” singing along to the falsetto parts of “Number Nine Dream.” No photo- or audio-recording would do the ludicrousness justice.

But I’ll be ready to go for Diocesan Convention today, and for the Adult Forum at St. Augustine’s Church, Wilmette, tomorrow morning.

Not A Post

I should have blogged today — technically, I had time and everything — but I didn’t even though I owe responses on the Druid clergy dust-up, Dave “used to be Time’s Shadow, now Groundhog Day, but not Connect & Empower-Music Alert” Rogers’s blog about the politics of “life,” and the Cobb County creationism brouhaha.

I just didn’t feel like it today; during the time I had free to write, I preferred to chat with friends, orfiddle with the redesign of the Seabury website, or just plain take it easy. I have an Adult Ed class to prepare for on Sunday, I’m going to Diocesan Convention tomorrow, and I have to put together a response to some of Stan Hauerwas’s writing for the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting next weekend. I’ll get back to these IOUs, but today, tonight, I’m putting them off another day or so.

But while I’m blogging about not blogging, I was repelled by the gall of Bill “I gambled away more than you’ll earn in two lifetimes” Bennett in pontificating about moral values in the aftermath of the election. Moral values my ear!

And a few days ago, Jeff wrote about his fascination with composition. Yes, exactly!

Happy Martinmas, Unexpectedly

My colleague Paula had a last-minute appointment come up, so I’m suybbing for her at tonight’s Community Eucharist in commemoration of St. Martin of Tours. I haven’t had much time to mull things over, but will clutch at a few homiletical straws from the neighborhood of Matthew 25:34-40, Isaiah 58:6-12, and Psalm 15.

I’ll post the sermon below, when I found out how it ends. . . . .

Anderson Chapel of St. John the Divine, Seabury-Western
Isa 58:6-12/Ps 15/Matt 25:34-40
Martin of Tours, November 11, 2004

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We don’t usually celebrate Martinmas as a particularly Trinitarian feast; our readings and prayers push hard for us to remember the saint as the soldier who shared his cloak with a rough sleeper in Amiens. But as a wise theologian once said, “It's more complicated than that” – both in the readings and in the church history – and as almost always, the complications point us toward the hard work, the hard thinking where the gospel finds its richest soil, its strongest roots.

One hard part of tonight’s gospel lesson lies in the frustrating unselfconsciousness with which the righteous sheep responded to the need that they saw. The blessed righteous in tonight’s gospel lesson not only fed the hungry, watered the thirsty, clothed the naked, sheltered the stranger, cared for the sick and visited the prisoners, they did so without any thought that in so doing, they might be serving Jesus. As elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus commends not only those followers who hear his words and do what he asks, but Jesus also extends his blessing to unanticipated saints. Like the prodigal’s elder brother, we who enlisted as volunteers in Martin’s army of disciples must simply look on as Jesus brings aboard a bunch of conscripts, draftees, to take places among us at God’s right hand.

Matthew wants us not to think about the consequences of our ministry, though – he explicitly reminds us not to think ahead about what will be our reward. Don’t we trust that God recognizes goodness and will care for us? Matthew’s kind of discipleship rules out calculation, relies on trust and ungrudging love. And oddly enough, that sort of immediate generosity overflows from our hearts not so much because we heard edifying stories and pointed sermons about why we ought to be generous – and more because we come to know God, and to understand that our Way sets us free from the illusion that we can match our foresight against the contingencies of serving God.

Yet – another hard part here – recognizing God rightly requires that we know for whom we’re looking, that we not seek out just any self-proclaimed generic deity, suitable for most everyday spiritual purposes. Our hands, our minds, our affections learn to love this God in ways joyful and frustrating, simple and baffling. The deeper our longing to know this God, the harder the Way of discerning, of yielding, of following will be – especially if we find ourselves constantly deliberately aware of the cost of discipleship, of the weight of ministry.

You perhaps have already encountered some of the costs, the challenges, the obstacles, the burdens, the complications of answering a call to step forward to lead God’s people. You may want to throttle the next person who suggests that the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Bless you, for your willingness to come this far — and we can pray together that you will be relieved. But for most of us, the path to the tabernacle of the Lord runs a rugged and strenuous way. That is how we recognize it.

On that path, you will not be alone. We look unpromising, we fellow-travelers and roadside hermits and monarchs and prelates and children and musicians, but watch out, sheep! Looks may be deceiving, and even a gruff or grandiose façade may conceal a heart that speaks truth, a guileless tongue, a respectful neighbor, a soul that longs for an opportunity to live blamelessly, to do what is right. You are not alone, but surrounded by saints, comforted by choirs of angels, sustained and strengthened by the Spirit – and surprisingly, constantly, walking in the presence of the Christ who came among us to give a grace we could never plan for, to welcome us to a sharing in God’s life that we could never work up on our own. With the holiest of company, we may give a day or two, a year or three, a lifetime and more, to abiding with the complications that come from learning to love God spontaneously, and we may come to recognize that the hardest part isn’t the learning, or the loving, but the living, together.

Amen

Why MacIntyre?

As I was clearing a spate of uninvited comments today — yes, I should get around to the MT upgrade, who has time to do that as carefully as I would need to? — Margaret pointed out that seventy-two of these messages ended up appended to my post that linked to Alasdair MacIntyre’s essay on not voting.

So, do unsolicited drug advertisers feel a special attraction to Aristotelian-Christian theologians? Or was a spambot just caught in a loop?

Whatever the case, if you came to this blog looking for online pharmaceuticals, you’ll have to keep looking in some other place. I cleaned them out, again, for now.

Where Are They Now?

For the past six weeks or so, I’ve been keeping my eyes open at the grocery store for a cup of banana yogurt. They’ve had strawberry-banana pretty regularly, and countless exotic new flavors such as key lime pie and strawberry shortcake, but no plain old banana.

I don’t even remember how banana yogurt tastes — but it figures in a Proustian moment.

I first tasted banana yogurt, first considered any yogurt worth eating, when I went on a date with another Bowdoin student. We went on a picnic out in a field somewhere outside Brunswick, and she suggested that we each have a yogurt. My taste was governed by the prospect of making a good impression, and she could have said “Let’s each have a bowl of worms,” and I’d have been inclined to say yes. I chose a banana yogurt in the waxy cardboard cups Dannon used to sell, with the cardboard discs on the top.

The day was lovely, the picnic pleasant (and entirely cordial), and to my surprise the banana yogurt was tasty. I never went out with her again, don’t recall her name (it was a few weeks at least until I would meet the one true love of my life), but since then I have liked yogurt, and I would have liked to have tasted banana yogurt once again. from a waxy cardboard cup — but that train has left the station.

Sympathy and Prayers for Mena

I’ve spent a little time around hospitals lately, so when I heard (at Tom’s place) that Mena had popped her kneecap, I felt a pang of sympathy — but the story and photos make the whole matter much more compelling.

Best wishes for rapid healing, Mena, and honest — we believe you can catch us. No need to prove anything.

Visit From Athena

  
Visit From Athena
Originally uploaded by AKMA.

I was marking some papers tonight when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a ten-year-old goddess of wisdom, with her familiar owl. What wisdom tries to evaluate essays on Arianism when it might gaze in adoration at such regal beauty? Specially when she’s your daughter. . . .

Strike Me Red!

Tom Matrullo calls our attention to the most extraordinary success that the Republican ticket attained in Florida — or, more precisely, in those counties in which the votes were tallied by optical scanners (not touch-screen devices).

Isn’t that an amazing bit of luck for Bush!

Cantering To Tripp’s Ordination

Well, I scribbled away all afternoon, and traded instant messages with my theological consultant in North Carolina, and eventually came out with a sermon for the Canterbury Northwestern service (which will appear in the “extended” section below).

Then Pippa and I motored down to North Shore Baptist Church, site of Tripp Hudgins’s ordination. We arrived not in time to catch my Disseminary brother Trevor, certainly not in time to hear what I’m told is the best ordination sermon ever, but just in time to scarf down some delectable canapes and to be pointed toward Tripp’s house, where the party would continue indefinitely. A splendid time was had by everyone I could see, and Tripp introduced me to some interesting family members and leaders of the North Shore Baptist community.

Now, a full day of meetings and appointments for Monday — whee!

Anderson Chapel of St. John the Divine
Canterbury - Northwestern

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31

November 7, 2004

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It looks as though we have five or ten minutes together this evening, so I thought we could clear up the problem of free will and determinism tonight. If you have a pen and paper, you should feel free to take notes; this’ll save you a lot of confusion later in life, and of course you can rely on me to straighten everything out correctly.

There’s a problem, of course, because passages of Scripture such as this evening’s lessons from Daniel and even Ephesians make it sound as though God has our futures all pinned down, so that Daniel can get a sneak preview, a trailer of all the best scenes from the coming attraction, and just as certainly as Anakin Skywalker will turn into Darth Vader in next summer’s Star Wars movie, so surely four kings shall arise out of the earth to oppress the faithful. We play our parts according to a screenplay determined by a heavenly director, according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will. And yet, we sense ourselves to be free to defy God, and indeed other parts of the Bible warn against the perils of resisting God’s will for us – which it seems as though we oughtn’t to be able to do. The character of Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn’t have any say in how the movie turns out, and even if the actor Ewan McGregor starts improvising on the set, director George Lucas just cuts that footage. Obi-Wan does only what McGregor acts, and McGregor acts only what Lucas allows.
So, on one hand, you know you were free to skip chapel this evening (too late now!); and on the other, God had determined from the foundation of the world that you would be warming the pews in just these places, wondering when this homily would end, hoping it doesn’t get any more tedious.
Does it makes sense to suppose that God has determined the rough outlines of history, and we fill in the details with our free choices? Sometimes people take that line, and argue that God doesn’t mess with plate tectonics, cause and effect, other laws of nature, but only intervenes in the processes we don’t fully understand: Heisenberg uncertainty, adolescent psychology, the relation between exit polls and the actual results of touch-screen voting in Ohio. That line – in theological jargon, we call that approach “the God of the gaps,” the God who makes divine power known only where we can’t explain things on the basis of reason and science – that line may play well for casual observers, but it just flat-out conflicts with Scripture and with the wisdom of millennia of saints. The closer you look, the shabbier the gaps look. When someone in the Tech Center discovers a new wrinkle in chaos theory, God doesn’t just retreat from that area; when the Centers for Disease Control announce new understanding of hantaviruses, God doesn’t stir up some new mysterious ailment as a way of controlling people. And if someday a brilliant Northwestern student announced an algorithm that predicted infallibly whether at the ice cream counter I would choose a scoop of Coffee Heath Bar or Oreo Cookie, God would not retreat from the universe, nor would you be able to convince me that I wasn’t choosing freely.
For all things come of God, the quarks and bosons and leptons, and God enacts the very “natural laws” of which our discoveries make so much; and the God whom we know invites us freely to cooperate with God’s will as a gift, as an opportunity to which we come out of trust and love. Gravity is a gift from God, as is our understanding of it – and because of gravity, we can freely enjoy a sitting in a comfy chair without floating away from it, and if we exercise the freedom to sit down where there is no chair, we can freely experience the effects of God’s gift very differently. The limit to our freedom lies not in God’s restricting us but in our ignorance and our disinclination honestly to accept our limitations. God offers us a world of abundance and fullness; in fact, God’s every encounter with us comes always by way of superabundance, of exceeding glory, of a beauty and greatness that beggar our capacities to recognize and take it all in. God’s presence overwhelms us with so very much to understand that none of us has a chance of grasping all of it, that each of us needs help discerning God’s will and God’s ways.
We need one another to understand our freedom. We need the saints, all saints, the run-of-the-mill disciples gathered here and in churches and chapels and storefronts and cathedrals, today and through the ages, and for ages beyond our anticipation; they are part of us, like it or not, and our freedom comes from living out our lives, our characters, our selves as inheritors of the promises they’ve handed down to us. We can’t abstract ourselves from the gifts that brought us here except by enslaving ourselves to the lie that we are our own creation. We didn’t write our own parts here; we didn’t determine the laws of the universe, nor do we decide how our lives best receive and reflect God’s grace and love. It’s not about me or you; it’s about our communion, our coming-together in harmony and thankfulness, in freedom, to join our lives with different, sometimes disagreeable neighbors, strangers, friends, and ultimately to join our lives with God.

That’s our destiny, sisters and brothers – the hope to which God has called us, the the spirit of wisdom and revelation, the riches of God’s glorious inheritance. This destiny lies beyond our grasp just now, but we taste it, we scent it, we make it real for others, here and now, by our patience, by our unwillingness to answer evil with evil, by our free sharing with one another. We make the promise of the kingdom real for others, and we receive the promised kingdom when others extend themselves for us, when they forgive us our anger and spite and folly, when they share with us what we can’t attain for ourselves. We make God’s promises real, because God has already made them real before we even appeared on the scene, and by the grace of freedom God gives us the opportunity to make it real and keep it real in following the way of discipleship.
Coming in at around ten minutes, I think, so here’s the executive summary: Live in freedom by aiming your every step toward the path where love freely embraces hate, where nonviolence freely withstands violence, where abundance freely transforms poverty to the fullness, the immeasurable power of God’s greatness working among us, for us and for all the holy ones. Find freedom in God; discover, reveal a kingdom determined not by power or spin or domination but by an extravagant grace that passes all we can ask or imagine, destined for freedom in a drama whose ending makes us real, forever and ever.

Amen

Totally

As a long-term, active proponent of visual communication and web-based theological instruction, I can solemnly assure all visitors that BibleDudes is, like, awesomely rad!

As a long-term, active proponent of careful verbal communication, I can solemnly second what Mark Goodacre says about BibleDudes: “is this website going to look pretty dated in a few years time when noone says ‘dude’ anymore, and all its other colloquialisms, even in America?” (love that “even in America”). Sure — why not “BibleBlokes” (but surely not “BibleLads”)?

No particular ideas about the sermon, although the Ephesians passage bespeaks the Pauline vision of what I’ve called “articulated felicity” with particular vividness. The Lukan Beatitudes, I don’t feel as though I can preach on, at least not this evening; I always feel as though there’s nothing I could possibly add to a text such as that.

Incredible Sermon

This afternoon, Pip and Si and I ambled downtown to see The Incredibles, which Pippa had waited a full day for since the release. I think it’s probably my favorite Pixar release — I’ve seen that some reviewers were unimpressed, but I can’t think what they objected to. I thought the plot and characters were not simply derivative, but evocative and allusive to their predecessors, and that the complexities of the characters’ personae, situations, and ages worked both as an enhancement of the [predictable] narrative line and as commentary on heroism, aging, and our investment in heroes. I did rue the racial politics that relegate Samuel Jackson’s character to a small supporting role — can’t even a cartoon family be interracial in Hollywood? — but seeing the movie with Pippa and Si was balm to my frayed nerves.

On the other hand (as I observed in an IM conversation), “A movie about a middle-aged guy in a family with extraordinary powers, who needs to balance the exercise of his powers on behalf of others, with remembering to put his family first — who can identify with a movie like that?”

I do have to write a sermon for tomorrow evening’s service at Canterbury Northwestern, where I’m subbing for Heather-in-Korea. Just the other day I subbed for Cynthia at St. Giles, and it was the first time I filled in for one of my students; this makes the second time, just three weeks later. The readings for the Sunday After All Saints will be Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31. I’ll lump them all in one big file, and see what happens.

No, I won’t preach on The Incredibles. I don’t preach on pop-cultural topics, since they’re usually less universally known and understood than their proponents tend to believe, and because I get little enough chance to preach the gospel that I don’t feel I can afford to foreground the latest movie, TV episode, or hit single if it means taking time away from Scripture. Plus, so many of those sermons (I remember a spate of sermons on The Lion King) end up lame, that I’d feel awkward thinking that mine was, by contrast, actually likely to be worth the airspace: sort of “mediocrity by association.” That doesn’t mean other folks can’t do it, just that it doesn’t come out right when I try. I prefer to add cultural allusions as grace notes, as hidden pleasures for those who discover them, as communication-building between me and hearers who get them, as elements of a long enough list that I may never actually have time to work on the sermon itself tonight. . . . oh well, on to that.)

But do see The Incredibles. If the jungle chase scene begins to take a little too long, use those moments to think about your own loved ones, and how rarely we can show them how we love and appreciate and need them.

DRMA (and song for the term, in a variety of ways): As Cool As I Am by Dar Williams (she turns the lyrics wonderfully, but greatly as I admire the whole thing, the lines “Truth is just like time — it catches up and just keeps going,” and “I don’t know what you want / I want somebody who sees me,” catch in my throat every time. You may not know this, but Margaret and I invited Bruce Springsteen to our wedding (because his songs had touched us so), and he responded — not with a card, but by dedicating “Born to Run” to us in Akron Ohio, the 1981 tour (I don’t recall whether it was the 29th or 30th). Someday I’d wish to reach out to Dar Williams, for similar reasons; “As Cool As I Am,” “What Do You Hear In These Sounds,” numerous other songs from her first three albums, and really almost all of The Green World, knock me out.

Just Asking

Since when did anyone think I would want a Rolex?

Busy Night

Slept ten solid hours, unusual for me. Caffeine-deprivation headache beginning to remind me who’s my daddy.

Busy Day

I haven’t been awake this many consecutive hours since dissertation days. Mañana.

Something Like This

Dan Gillmor anticipates that the aftermath of the campaign and election means something such as this — and bleak as it sounds, I confess that where I dissent from his account, my respect for his general wisdom obliges me to question my own half-full tendency to make the best of things. Three frightening words: “Bush Supreme Court.”

What Does It Mean

If the Democratic Party can’t win in a year when the incumbent President is administering an unpopular, unsuccessful foreign war, when a blockbuster semi-documentary made millions of dollars exposing that President’s short-comings, when the economy is uncertain, when the Red Sox won the World Series — under what circumstances can it win?

Unseasonable Sense

Alasdair MacIntyre — a philosopher-theologian who has influenced Margaret and me greatly — makes a case for not voting, even in this fraught year. We’ve fallen on each side of this puzzle at various times, and every year we revisit the subject, but MacIntyre makes an articulate case for one rationale for abstaining.

The basic economic injustice of our society is that the costs of economic growth are generally borne by those least able to afford them and that the majority of the benefits of economic growth go to those who need them least.

Margaret and I tend to take a different tack — but it’s satisfying to see somebody intelligent mounting an argument against voting, whether or not it’s the one that finally might motivate us.

Imperishable Diversions

The election will be over this evening, and its results will be settled within a few months. That leaves two main topics for commentary: (a) my cold, and (b) Episcopal church politics.

Regarding (a), I must first stipulate that I’m a terrible convalescent. Any cold I endure is much less severe than my complaining would indicate. That being said, I don’t recall ever having had a cold in which my eyes and lips felt quite so miserable. My stuffed sinuses follow the pattern of typical colds, though since this one is my cold, I’m sure they’re more stuffy than usual. My neck is stiff, and there’s no comfortable position for it. I had to drop Margaret at Midway this morning, and on the way back I inadvertently cut off another driver on Lake Shore Drive. He honked, and I wished that David Weinberger’s apology gesture were more generally recognized. Then, on Sheridan in Rogers Park, the driver behind me rear-ended me (she must have been going 10 mph at least); the Subaru showed no damage, and I felt sympathetic for her, and the collar prodded me, so I shrugged it off and sent her away. But that didn’t help my sore neck or headache.

Okay, enough about my ephemeral minor cold. What about the politics in the Episcopal Church?

First, I’m not worried about the Druidic clergy in the Diocese of Pennsylvania — not because I think there’s any rationale for their behavior, but because Anglicans have always harbored oddball clergy. Anyone who’s surprised that a couple of crypto-Druids turned up among Anglican clergy hasn’t been paying enough attention to history.

I don’t condone their muddle-headed theology; it’s wrong, and there’s an end on it. I hope that Bishop Bennison deals more rigorously with clergy who depart from Christian faith than he does those whose adherence to traditional theology renders them intractable relative to the direction of the rest of the diocese. On the other hand, I don’t see this as a shocking novelty; it’s a perennial manifestation of the genius of Anglican ecclesiology, that we endure crackpots in the interest of avoiding inquisitions.

I don’t disrespect Druids and pagans, either (though I probably show attenuated patience for “neo”-pagans) — I respect Druidic and pagan belief and practice enough to insist that its divergence from Christian teaching be fully observed and not trivialized. Druids died for their opposition to Christianity; who would presume to minimize the meaning of their deaths, in the interest of propounding a facile reconciliation of contrary faiths? Out of full respect for the divergent beliefs of pagans, I think they ought to pursue their Druidic convictions apart from the antithetical teaching and practice of the Episcopal Church.

So I would comfortably exclude neo-semi-Druids from the Episcopal priesthood. I would not, though, endorse the vigilant homogeneous orthodoxy that some spokespeople for The Tradition endorse. Just when would that have characterized the best face of Anglican tradition? Probably not right around the Reformation, when Protestants and Catholics were burning one another at the stake. Probably not in the seventeenth century, when Puritans and Cavaliers, Laudians and Presbyterians were ready to execute one another. Who represent the homogeneous core theologians of this tradition? Hooker and Cranmer only? What about Maurice, Temple, Newman, Wilberforce, Gore, Farrar, Mascall? Do they all count — and if some don’t, who decided who was in and who was out?

So far as I can tell, the strength of the Anglican Tradition lies precisely in its willingness not to permit its decisions to be shaped by panic over heterodoxy— in its confidence that the Truth will always prevail in the long run, and in the humble awareness that churches and councils err, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith. In that confidence, and in the privilege of serving a church that observes its own limitations, I cling to the truth handed down to me by the saints, I repudiate those teachings and practices that contradict that truth, and pray that all people (Anglicans especially included) come to understand the truth in its fullness — which full understanding none of us can with integrity yet claim.

Kevin Says

I mentioned vote links in this morning’s entry, so I should point to this, especially on Election Day Eve. By the way, I oppose Bush.

How It Is

At three o’clock Central Standard Time, Electoral Vote Predictor has Kerry winning, 298 votes to Bush’s 231. That’s a marked change from the middle of the night Saturday, when Bush was winning with an electoral vote total in the 270’s.

Obviously, the predictor is generating strong responses to small changes in the data, but Kerry may be able to afford to begin looking confident and commanding — if only to make the Bush team look as panicky as they probably are.

Again?

I had forgotten that I’m on to preach again this week, at the Thursday evening service. The readings are Deuteronomy 6:4-7, and Matthew 22:34-40.

If I have any idea what I’ll say before I stand up Thursday evening, I’ll be sure to let you know.

One Note

I acknowledge that by posting this note, I repeat and perpetuate my fixation on one as-yet-unimplemented feature of the major search engines. Nonetheless, this morning I encountered another setting in which I would love to be able to run a seeded search.

For those who haven’t heard this rant before, “seeded search” refers to a Google-like prioritized search based on the number and quality of a site’s links — but that the search begins outward from a limited set of touchstone sites (or reference terms). Thus, a seeded search for "biblical hermeneutics" that started from my site would turn up postmodern sympathizers much sooner than it would turn up inerrantists. It’s a moderately simple (not simple with regard to the computational resources involved, I would guess) way of making search results more useful. (It would work especially well with Kevin Marks’s link votes system, I should add.)

I return to this refrain of mine this morning as I wandered over to AudioScrobbler’s Top Artists charts. The charts at AudioScrobbler show strong persistence from week to week; AS users really like Radiohead, Green Day, Coldplay, and Nirvana. That’s fine, and it’s useful information. But what I want to know is, “What do the people who never listen to Rammstein like?” — because that’s likely to be much more useful to me. I’ve never voluntarily listened to Rammstein, and doubt that I’ll be won over any too soon; but if someone likes R.E.M. and [something else], I might be interested to know what the other thing is.

So my new seeded-search request would be for “top artist” and “top song” lists based on one or two seeded elements: the most popular artists among people who like Modest Mouse but never listen to Metallica, for instance, or people who listen to both Philip Glass and Sleater-Kinney, or (better yet) a three-term search for artists preferred by people who like Philip Glass and Sleater-Kinney, but who wouldn’t go anywhere near Jamiroquai. You get the idea.

I realize that the automated suggestion and affinity searches do some of this work; I’m asking for slightly higher degree of client-side involvement. There’s a lot to be found out, that we won’t learn unless we let users figure out the terms of their own queries. (As Jenna’s example illustrates powerfully!)

DRMA (Dave Rogers, who’s actually posting again occasionally, Music Alert): Spirit In The Sky by Norman Greenbaum; Who Do You Love? by George Thorogood; Garden of Simple by Ani DiFranco; Kalifornia by Fatboy Slim; The Sheltering Sky by King Crimson; Look at Me by John Lennon; We'll Deal With You Later by the Beautiful South.